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Webster 1913 Edition


Brimstone

Brim′stone

,
Noun.
[OE.
brimston
,
bremston
,
bernston
,
brenston
; cf. Icel.
brennistein
. See
Burn
,
Verb.
T.
, and
Stone
.]
Sulphur; See
Sulphur
.

Brim′stone

,
Adj.
Made of, or pertaining to, brimstone;
as,
brimstone
matches
.
From his
brimstone
bed at break of day
A-walking the devil has gone.
Coleridge.

Webster 1828 Edition


Brimstone

BRIM'STONE

,
Noun.
Sulphur; a hard, brittle, inflammable substance, of a lemon yellow color, which has no smell, unless heated, and which becomes negatively electric by heat and friction. It is found, in great quantities, and sometimes pure, in the neighborhood of volcanoes. It is an ingredient in a variety of minerals and ores. The sulphur of commerce is procured from its natural beds, or artificially extracted from pyrites.

Definition 2024


brimstone

brimstone

English

Brimstone butterfly

Noun

brimstone (countable and uncountable, plural brimstones)

  1. The sulfur of ****; ****, damnation.
    • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene:
      For griefe thereof, and diuelish despight, / From his infernall fournace forth he threw / Huge flames, that dimmed all the heauens light, / Enrold in duskish smoke and brimstone blew.
    • 1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost:
      Till, as a signal giv'n, th' uplifted Spear / Of their great Sultan waving to direct / Thir course, in even ballance down they light / On the firm brimstone, and fill all the Plain; / A multitude.
    • 1854, Charles Dickens, Hard Times:
      [W]hen he [the Devil] is aweary of vice, and aweary of virtue, used up as to brimstone, and used up as to bliss [...]
    • 1916, James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man:
      But the sulphurous brimstone which burns in **** is a substance which is specially designed to burn for ever and for ever with unspeakable fury.
  2. (obsolete) sulfur
    • 1816, Walter Scott, The Antiquary:
      Weel I wot I wad be broken if I were to gie sic weight to the folk that come to buy our pepper and brimstone, and suchlike sweetmeats.
    • 1838, Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby:
      Don't think, young man, that we go to the expense of flower of brimstone and molasses, just to purify them.
  3. (archaic) used attributively as an intensifier in exclamations
    • 1852, Charles Dickens, Bleak House:
      You are a brimstone pig. You're a head of swine!
    • 1852, Charles Dickens, Bleak House:
      You're a brimstone idiot.
    • 1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, chapter 7, in Mr. Pratt's Patients:
      I made a speaking trumpet of my hands and commenced to whoop “Ahoy!” and “Hello!” at the top of my lungs. […] The Colonel woke up, and, after asking what in brimstone was the matter, opened his mouth and roared “Hi!” and “Hello!” like the bull of Bashan.
  4. The butterfly Gonepteryx rhamni of the Pieridae family.

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